930 Forums
=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: on December 06, 2005, 11:56:00 am
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Submitted for your approval (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=15263703&Mytoken=78C103EF-BD3A-4B4B-8F53A361346FBE1F2390476328)
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I so fucking love u kelly u rock in so many ways and ur a fucking role model 2 me!
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Jeffree "CUNT" Star (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=71676&Mytoken=e294f260-7de2-4709-af64-07a02c08a65e)
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i'm so happy that i am not "growing up" right now. was there a cultural wasteland as big as the one going on right now in the mid 80s to mid 90s? maybe i'm just biased having been in high school and college during that timeframe, but it seems to me that there was nowhere near the level of publicized garbage that there is currently. maybe i'm wrong though. the 80s was marred by a lot of one-hit wonders and bad metal. none of this is to say that there are not a lot of great bands out now, but precious few of them receive much media coverage. it's all pop tarts and all money all the time.
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Jander Kitten (http://www.myspace.com/jandervk)
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Nina Hagen (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=29337668&Mytoken=65e92d84-7a8d-4485-9902-177c7ab5da3a)
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Originally posted by jdr:
i'm so happy that i am not "growing up" right now. was there a cultural wasteland as big as the one going on right now in the mid 80s to mid 90s? maybe i'm just biased having been in high school and college during that timeframe, but it seems to me that there was nowhere near the level of publicized garbage that there is currently. maybe i'm wrong though. the 80s was marred by a lot of one-hit wonders and bad metal. none of this is to say that there are not a lot of great bands out now, but precious few of them receive much media coverage. it's all pop tarts and all money all the time.
Heh... every generation is characterized by an overwhelming pop-cultural wasteland, but also by ways to escape it for something better for the truly resourceful. We tend to look at the past as better because only the better stuff filters through time, while the crap remains buried.
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very true.
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was there a cultural wasteland as big as the one going on right now in the mid 80s to mid 90s?
yes
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Originally posted by jdr:
i'm so happy that i am not "growing up" right now. was there a cultural wasteland as big as the one going on right now in the mid 80s to mid 90s? maybe i'm just biased having been in high school and college during that timeframe, but it seems to me that there was nowhere near the level of publicized garbage that there is currently. maybe i'm wrong though. the 80s was marred by a lot of one-hit wonders and bad metal. none of this is to say that there are not a lot of great bands out now, but precious few of them receive much media coverage. it's all pop tarts and all money all the time.
the commercialization of the internet in the late 1990s has only helped to strengthen the group-mentality that this current teenage generation is a part of. it's far worse than before. sure, we can buy our 930 club tickets from our home now, but at what cost to society!?
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Originally posted by distance:
the commercialization of the internet in the late 1990s has only helped to strengthen the group-mentality that this current teenage generation is a part of. it's far worse than before. sure, we can buy our 930 club tickets from our home now, but at what cost to society!?
I'm sorry but that's ridiculous. Teenagers have been acting like herd following Nazi apparatchniks since the beginning of history. It has nothing to do with the Internet.
Go see "The Breakfast Club" immediately! And then go see "Lord of the Flies."
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Originally posted by Doctor Doom:
And then go see "Lord of the Flies."
Actually, you should read this one. It's a much better book then movie.
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Originally posted by vansmack:
Actually, you should read this one. It's a much better book then movie.
True... the book was amazing.
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Originally posted by Doctor Doom:
I'm sorry but that's ridiculous. Teenagers have been acting like herd following Nazi apparatchniks since the beginning of history. It has nothing to do with the Internet.
Go see "The Breakfast Club" immediately! And then go see "Lord of the Flies."
my post wasn't 100% serious.
and i fucking loathe the breakfast club.
and i've read lord of the flies.
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Originally posted by distance:
my post wasn't 100% serious.
and i fucking loathe the breakfast club.
Some things are not laughing matters.
And you WILL watch the Breakfast Club.
<img src="http://www.jp-m.net/films/films-img/alex-yeux7.jpg" alt=" - " />
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Not true. What with piercings and tattoos, and mohawks, teenagers now have a myriad of new ways to express themselves individually and cut loose from the herd mentality.
Originally posted by distance:
Originally posted by jdr:
i'm so happy that i am not "growing up" right now. was there a cultural wasteland as big as the one going on right now in the mid 80s to mid 90s? maybe i'm just biased having been in high school and college during that timeframe, but it seems to me that there was nowhere near the level of publicized garbage that there is currently. maybe i'm wrong though. the 80s was marred by a lot of one-hit wonders and bad metal. none of this is to say that there are not a lot of great bands out now, but precious few of them receive much media coverage. it's all pop tarts and all money all the time.
the commercialization of the internet in the late 1990s has only helped to strengthen the group-mentality that this current teenage generation is a part of. it's far worse than before. sure, we can buy our 930 club tickets from our home now, but at what cost to society!? [/b]
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Originally posted by Etan de Balzac, Footie Ball Player:
Not true. What with piercings and tattoos, and mohawks, teenagers now have a myriad of new ways to express themselves individually and cut loose from the herd mentality.
when everyone is doing those things to cut loose from one herd, doesn't that just create an alternate herd?
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Don't axe me. I would not know. My life has always been dedicated to being part of the herd.
Originally posted by distance:
Originally posted by Etan de Balzac, Footie Ball Player:
Not true. What with piercings and tattoos, and mohawks, teenagers now have a myriad of new ways to express themselves individually and cut loose from the herd mentality.
when everyone is doing those things to cut loose from one herd, doesn't that just create an alternate herd? [/b]
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alternate herd..?
sounds like a good band name
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Originally posted by distance:
Originally posted by Etan de Balzac, Footie Ball Player:
Not true. What with piercings and tattoos, and mohawks, teenagers now have a myriad of new ways to express themselves individually and cut loose from the herd mentality.
when everyone is doing those things to cut loose from one herd, doesn't that just create an alternate herd? [/b]
you're right! i mean, it is such a paradox...you take a look at Hot Topic, for example. a store that is trying to help people be individual and stand out in a crowd, yet. they market their clothes in every mall and every mass-media outlet of america. kids are now conforming by nonconforming.
and Jefferee Starr? he/she/it/questionable makes me puke a little in my mouth. i thought he was cool and interesting at first, that the makeup and photography were really just a neat and expressive art form. but, christ, have you listened to the music that boy is producing? and even worse, he thinks it is "hot shit." it sounds like week-old feces!
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most people, once they get past the age of 20 or so, begin to understand that whether you're a conformist or not depends on how you think, not how you dress.
Those that don't get this after age 20 are called "goths."
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well duh. isn't that common sense?
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Originally posted by you be betty:
well duh. isn't that common sense?
common sense is not so common, my dear.
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K-FED (http://www.myspace.com/kevinfederlineforreal)
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Originally posted by clouds R²:
Submitted for your approval (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=15263703&Mytoken=78C103EF-BD3A-4B4B-8F53A361346FBE1F2390476328)
is it because she's black?
-haired?
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Lesson for Murdoch: Keep the Bloggers Happy
By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: January 2, 2006
When Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought MySpace, the social-networking Web site, in July, some of its users gloomily predicted that the site would be altered to suit the company's corporate interests.
Proof for many of those people came earlier this month, when MySpace users began to notice that any references to YouTube, a video-sharing site and a competitor, were erased or blocked from appearing on My-Space. Some MySpace users also reported that when they tried to download videos from YouTube, a patch of white space appeared instead.
Ever-sensitive to corporate meddling, many MySpace users got angry. "My friends and I are trying to make the blogging community aware of a stealth censorship campaign that is being conducted by MySpace," one MySpace user, Ellis Yu, wrote to the Blog Herald, a Web site about blogs. "They are not admitting to it, and are trying to do this in secret."
Matthew McCullough, a blogger from Montclair, N.J., wrote in a Dec. 22 blog post that "if you even mention the word YouTube on your MySpace profile, it will be literally ripped out and only an empty white space will remain."
The official blog maintained by YouTube offered another explanation the next day, saying the issue was "a simple misunderstanding, and MySpace has re-enabled all YouTube embeds." A spokesman for the News Corporation did not return phone calls on Friday.
The incident underlines the peril corporations face as they buy blogs and networking sites like MySpace, which depend on the good will of their users. Mr. Murdoch paid $580 million for MySpace, a significant investment for a two-year-old Web site primarily populated by fickle teenagers and users in their 20's. Like other members of free community Web sites, MySpace users often react with indignation if they believe their content has been tampered with.
And they can always decide to leave for other networking sites. As one irate user put it in a message to MySpace members, "visit Friendster and Hi5 if you're interested in social networking sites that don't censor content and allow your YouTube video embeds." JULIE BOSMAN
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i just fell asleep reading this thread.
twice.
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Originally posted by sonickteam, forum nice guy:
i just fell asleep reading this thread.
Welcome back.
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Originally posted by vansmack:
Originally posted by sonickteam, forum nice guy:
i just fell asleep reading this thread.
Welcome back. [/b]
:) thanks sir. i was deported last month, but i am back now!!!!
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Heh... one thing about Rupert Murdoch is that while he may be sensitive to right-wing causes, he's more sensitive to the almighty dollar and keeping consumers happy. That's why Christian fundies love Fox News, but hate Fox.
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Do you need a passport to enter the US? Because now WE NEED one to enter the great white north.
Originally posted by sonickteam, forum nice guy:
Originally posted by vansmack:
Originally posted by sonickteam, forum nice guy:
i just fell asleep reading this thread.
Welcome back. [/b]
:) thanks sir. i was deported last month, but i am back now!!!! [/b]
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the Canadians must be worried about immigrants from down south!
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Originally posted by Hanover Fiste:
Do you need a passport to enter the US? Because now WE NEED one to enter the great white north.
no, i have never needed my passport to pass between countries. but i heard that is happening soon.
also, i have a work visa here and its a good possibility I will be marrying an american woman in the next couple years...
anyway, the deportation was a joke, i spent a few weeks at a lovely ski resort in the middle of freezing ass cold, almost uninhabitable canada.
:)
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Originally posted by sonickteam, forum nice guy:
its a good possibility I will be marrying an american woman in the next couple years...
Are you gonna play American Woman by The Guess Who for your wedding, eh? It's quite obvious you've been hypnotized by our colored lights and wonderous ghetto scenes.
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while it is the most fitting song for the wedding.
i think i will completely sell out and play the Lenny Kravitz version, or use a Barenaked Ladies song!!!!!
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Y'all probably won't be surprise to know that we used a George Jones song, a Ralph Stanley/Jim Lauderdale duet, and a classical piece by someone whose name escapes me right now, at our wedding.
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short wedding.
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Originally posted by Hanover Fiste:
Do you need a passport to enter the US? Because now WE NEED one to enter the great white north.
Originally posted by sonickteam, forum nice guy:
no, i have never needed my passport to pass between countries. but i heard that is happening soon.
Canadians entering America will need a passport in 2007. No fingerprinting though, unlike the rest of the world who will be finger printed on entry.
And by 2008, most Americans who visit Canada won't be able to re-enter the US without a passport. That is the reason why Canada is then going to make Americans take their passport with them - they don't want all the Americans left on their side of the border. Let's make sure the blame gets put on the right people.
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Originally posted by Hanover Fiste:
Do you need a passport to enter the US? Because now WE NEED one to enter the great white north.
when did this start? i haven't been to canada since oct 04, but when i went that time i was asked 3 questions on the way in and they didn't even ask me for ID.
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Originally posted by distance:
Originally posted by Hanover Fiste:
Do you need a passport to enter the US? Because now WE NEED one to enter the great white north.
when did this start? i haven't been to canada since oct 04, but when i went that time i was asked 3 questions on the way in and they didn't even ask me for ID. [/b]
the three questions:
1. Are you gay?
2. Do you smoke pot?
3. Are you carrying any crappy American beer into the country?
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Originally posted by distance:
when did this start?
As of 01/01/2006.
Or, if you're an easilly vetted VIP -type you are welcome to join the NEXUS (http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel/nexus/menu-e.html) scheme. Or simply get a CANPASS (http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel/canpass/menu-e.html) if you travel a lot on business. Both require a lot of snooping though, so if you're one of those who could be classified as an "ALTERNATIVE" -lifestyle type you better just stick with the old passport.
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Truth be told...you'll REALLY NEED the passport to RE-ENTER the U.S...not to gain admittance to the great white north:
At Issue: Your passport to more headaches (http://www.canadatourism.com/ctx/app/en/ca/magazine/article.do?path=templatedata%5Cctx%5CmagArticle%5Cdata%5Cen%5C2005%5Cissue09%5Cnews_and_opinion%5Cat_issue_passport)
Canada??s tourism industry is a strong supporter of increased border security - a fact of life in the post-9/11 world - but recognizes that freedom of movement remains essential. Maintaining the efficient flow of people across the Canada-United States border is a particular priority for the Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC), given that over 34 million US residents visited Canada in 2004 alone, including more than 27 million who travelled here by car.
However, cross-border movement is being threatened by documentation rules announced in April as part of the US government??s Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI): all travellers to and from the United States will be required to have passports or ??other secure documents? to enter or re-enter the country. At the end of 2005, the new rules will apply to all travel from or through the US, by air or sea, to or from the Caribbean, Bermuda and Central and South America. By the end of next year, they will take effect for all air and sea travel to or from Canada by US or Canadian citizens. And, as of December 31, 2007, Canadian citizens travelling to the United States and US residents returning home via land border crossings will also be required to have passports or ??other secure documents?.
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http://www.keepexploring.ca/tc_redesign/app/en/us/travelArticle.do?catId=51 (http://www.keepexploring.ca/tc_redesign/app/en/us/travelArticle.do?catId=51)
nothing on this page says anything about US citizens NEEDing a passport at this time.
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This is the last time I'm going to say it.
The US is requiring Canadians beginning next year (2007) to show a passport upon entry to the US.
And the US is requiring US citizens to show a US passport upon re-entry to the US in 2008, prompting Canada to ask US citizens for their passport upon entering Canada so they don't have to deal with all of the Americans stuck on Canada's side of the border.
There will be similar requirements for Baja, Mexico.
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but what about now?? i cant find anything about needing a passport now!
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Originally posted by vansmack:
And the US is requiring US citizens to show a US passport upon re-entry to the US in 2008, prompting Canada to ask US citizens for their passport upon entering Canada so they don't have to deal with all of the Americans stuck on Canada's side of the border.
i guess that foils my plan of going there and getting "stuck". damn.
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Originally posted by sonickteam, forum nice guy:
but what about now?? i cant find anything about needing a passport now!
I see what you mean. I'm too am really struggling with "beginning in 2007" and "in 2008"- anybody able to translate that to the Queen's English for my Canadian friend?
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so wait, in 2007 , Canadians will need passports to enter the US and in 2008 US citizens will need passports to enter back into the US.
but what happens in 2009?
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Originally posted by sonickteam, forum nice guy:
but what happens in 2009?
Teleportation.
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How to download any song on myspace...
http://www.tech-recipes.com/internet_tips1139.html (http://www.tech-recipes.com/internet_tips1139.html)
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'MySpace' Page Interests Police
Foul Play In Death Of Livermore Teen
By Noel Cisneros
Jan. 22 - KGO - Investigators suspect foul play in the death of a Bay Area teenager. Kayla Reed's body was found in a canal in Tracy. She had been missing from Livermore for more than a month.
Fifteen-year-old Kayla Reed was reported missing on December 5, seven weeks ago. Livermore police now believe she was murdered shortly after she disappeared.
Sgt. Joe Herrera, Livermore police department: "We were able to positively identify the body found in the river as the missing person Kayla Reed."
Reed's body was found floating in the Delta-Mendota Canal outside of Tracy on Janauary 10. Police have not determined the cause of her death.
They believe she was dumped there and that it was not a suicide.
Her mother reported Kayla missing after not seeing her at their Livermore home for two days. For the first month, Kayla's case was investigated as a runaway.
Neighbors paint a picture of Kayla Reed's home as a noisy place, with lots of yelling. Police had been there numerous times, long before Kayla disappeared.
Ross Gaunt, neighbor: "Yeah, we did call the police a couple of times just to get them to turn the music down. There were times when there was a large argument and Kayla would leave and the mother would argue with her and yell, 'Get back here.'"
With many runaway cases, teens contact their friends. Kayla had not done so. She had logged on to her MySpace.com website a day before she disappeared.
Devin Seguirant, friend of Kayla: "She was a quiet person. She was pretty much basically to herself. She had four main friends."
Devin Seguirant's known Kayla since middle school. He says Kayla was an average student not known to be a troublemaker.
Devin Seguirant, friend of Kayla: "I don't think MySpace has anything to do with it. I think that she just one day ran away from home, got real mad at her mom and ended up meeting some guy somewhere I think."
Investigators are asking anyone with information about the crime to call Livermore police at (925) 371-4900 or the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office at (209) 468-4400.
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Originally posted by vansmack:
'MySpace' Page Interests Police
Foul Play In Death Of Livermore Teen
By Noel Cisneros
Jan. 22 - KGO - Investigators suspect foul play in the death of a Bay Area teenager. Kayla Reed's body was found in a canal in Tracy. She had been missing from Livermore for more than a month.
...where's her myspace link?
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Here are my favorites:
Jon, the creepy ultra-conservative. (http://www.myspace.com/jon07)
Dude with a creepy obsession with the steelers and ugly chicks (http://www.myspace.com/big_sexy_sean)
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Originally posted by Flame away bitches:
Originally posted by vansmack:
[qb] ...where's her myspace link? [/b]
As your attorney, I advise you to avoid her Myspace page for the time being.....
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Originally posted by Alex:
Dude with a creepy obsession with the steelers and ugly chicks (http://www.myspace.com/big_sexy_sean)
doesnt that go hand in hand?
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can't find the profiles at the moment because myspace is blocked where i work, but two myspacites decided to use an image on my webserver as wallpaper. needless to say they've been chimped...
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This one is kind of cute (http://www.myspace.com/itspoop).
Read the blog too.
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Myspace - The Movie (http://www.youtube.com/w/Myspace%20-%20THE%20MOVIE!?v=oJ_dam5DmsM&eurl=) funny stuff indeed
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The myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/jakejekyll) of latently -homo Masacheusetts axeman, Jacob D. Robida. PASS THE AXE, baby!
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D'ya wanna date, (http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7002248087) You Be Betty???
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Robida's myspace page has been archived (http://www.pageoneq.com/news/2006/bar_0204056l.html)...in case you missed it.
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Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
Myspace - The Movie (http://www.youtube.com/w/Myspace%20-%20THE%20MOVIE!?v=oJ_dam5DmsM&eurl=) funny stuff indeed
'MySpace' Parody Launches Film Career (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060228/ap_on_en_mo/myspace_the_movie)
Mon Feb 27, 8:10 PM ET
Amateur filmmaker David Lehre first screened his short film "MySpace: The Movie" about a month ago at his 21st birthday party.
Since then, the spoof of the popular networking site has been viewed more than 6 million times through various online sites and has prompted a development deal offer from MTVU, contact from Hollywood managers and a complimentary e-mail from MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson.
"I've never had stuff go as fast as it is now," Lehre, who still lives at home with his parents in Washington, Mich., told the Los Angeles Times.
Lehre started making films with the same cast and crew in 10th grade, after he and his friends where denied parts in the high school theater production of "Little Women."
"I thought, 'Let's make a movie.' They're like, 'Do you know how to make a movie?' I was like, 'I don't know. I'll figure it out,'" Lehre said. "I was sick of other people deciding if I could entertain or not. I thought, if they won't give me a chance, then I'll make my own movie."
Lehre's 11-minute short parodies the habits of the popular social networking site. It is told in five scenes, beginning with an underwear-clad teen who vainly takes pictures of himself in the bathroom until his mothers barges in. Another scene features a showdown between a boy and his girlfriend who demands his password to view incriminating photos on his page. The final scene shows a partygoer ?? an actor portraying MySpace's Anderson ?? vomiting while his friends capture it on camera.
The film was written by Lehre and his best friend, Jeremy Kerr, and the skits were improvised by them and their friends. It took Lehre two months to film, edit and score the movie.
Lehre said he and his friends have 50 films to their credit and receive the support of local businesses, including a theater that screens their latest projects.
"MySpace: The Movie" was posted Jan. 28 to Lehre's personal Web site, DavidLehre.com, and three days later it was placed on YouTube.com by a user named "eggtea," who downloaded it from Lehre's site and uploaded it to the popular video sharing site.
About 20,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube each day and more than 15 million are watched. With 3.4 million viewings, "MySpace: The Movie" ranks as the site's most viewed video.
The film also has been on rotation on Current TV, a new network aimed at the 18-to-34-year-old audience that reaches 20 million U.S. homes.
Lehre was recently offered a development deal by MTVU, which is MTV's on-air, online and on-campus network.
"The whole point here is to incubate and develop (Lehre's) talent even further as we showcase it," said MTVU's head of programming, Ross Martin.
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On the Net:
http://www.davidlehre.com (http://www.davidlehre.com)
http://www.youtube.com (http://www.youtube.com)
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Pirro Attacks a Web Site as a Threat to Youths
By JONATHAN P. HICKS
Jeanine F. Pirro, the Republican candidate for attorney general, has begun an attack on MySpace.com, the Internet social network for teenagers and young adults, saying that it represents a threat to child safety.
MySpace.com is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who controls the News Corporation, which owns The New York Post, a publication that has often been critical of Ms. Pirro.
In an interview yesterday, Ms. Pirro, a former Westchester County district attorney, said her criticisms of MySpace.com were based on reports that the site is shocking to many parents and, according to the police, is attracting sexual predators.
In a letter to Mr. Murdoch, Ms. Pirro proposed that a forum "be convened as soon as possible" to include executives of the News Corporation and MySpace.com as well as school officials and parent leaders.
In the past year, The Post has printed less-than-flattering portrayals of Ms. Pirro, who two months ago announced her candidacy for attorney general.
The paper published unflattering pictures of Ms. Pirro and reminded readers that her husband, Albert, had served time in prison for tax fraud and had been found to have fathered a child out of wedlock.
Ms. Pirro said that her motivation for taking on the issue was a result of the work she did in her 12 years as district attorney as a zealous pursuer of sex offenders. "I know that pedophiles are devious and cunning," Mr. Pirro said. "And it was clear to me that this was a vehicle to maintain their anonymity and reach out to our children."
She added: "I'm not looking to shut anything down. But I'm trying to get experts together and deal with an issue that confronts this state and this nation."
NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/nyregion/01pirro.html?ex=1298869200&en=31ef16a28beb6af1&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)
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DAVID HAJDU ON MUSIC
Instant Gratification
Post date: 02.28.06
Issue date: 03.06.06
The New Republic
A shamelessly goofy band of street musicians performs in and around the subway station at Union Square in Manhattan--a banjoist, a washtub bassist, a percussionist who plays cookware, and someone doing something else, as I recall. Not long ago, I took the group's business card, which says "No Music, No Party," and then gives a phone number. I wondered if the phrase was the name of the ensemble or a terse statement of philosophy. If it is the latter, the fellows have a point that is borne out through cultural history. A great deal of human social interaction has always been conducted to music, notwithstanding Adorno's protests that social function stains the "purity" of music. A wealth of treasured and enduring music, formal and informal (as well as duly forgotten background noise), was originally created for get-togethers of all sorts, from Mozart's divertimenti and serenades to Louis Armstrong's New Orleans stomps to Bill Monroe's barn-dance bluegrass to Sly Stone's dense polyphony au go-go. No party, no music.
Every kind of socializing calls for its own music, and most of the action in social interaction transpires among young people, enslaved by their hormones to the service of meeting and attracting one another, thus perpetuating not only the species but also its popular music. At the moment, the explosive young website MySpace is enacting a transformation in the social behavior of teenagers and people of college age (in addition to some younger and older). In the process, the site has already had a stunning effect on the music of youth culture. MySpace is rapidly establishing a new system for hanging out and hooking up--a kind of new paradigm for young life; and, like all the old paradigms, it carries with it hazards, only one of which is its impact on music.
Founded in 2003 by Tom Anderson, who was twenty-seven at the time and who handles the creative end, and Chris DeWolfe, then thirty-seven and the money man, MySpace is a hybrid site, part networking forum, part music resource. The idea, a primordial one transported to cyberspace, was to use music to bring young people together. Anderson, who was playing guitar in an alternative-rock band called Swank when he began developing MySpace, thought it would be way cool to have a place on the Web where ambitious, unknown musicians such as himself could try to attract a following by posting their portraits, bios, information on upcoming gigs, and sample music files. But unlike several dozen sites that already did all that, MySpace encouraged users to interact with participating musicians, as well as with one another--to chat through text messages and to exchange digital pictures, building a community of people connected by an interest in new music.
Anderson had the wisdom to enlist some acquaintances, gorgeous female club kids, to be among the first MySpace users to post their photographs, imparting upon the site a patina of phototropic cool. He created what is essentially the biggest nightclub in the world (or more accurately, the incorporeal world), open all day and night. It is open to virtually anyone and to anyone virtual. The only velvet ropes, thin and malleable, are MySpace's token restrictions: the site is prohibited to those under fourteen, though MySpace requires no proof of age. (It has a bouncer at the door but does not card.) MySpace also forbids the use of "personally identifiable information," though it permits messages that might contain hints of a member's identity, such as the person's name, hometown, and birthday.
As I type this, MySpace has some 55,667,000 members, and the number is no doubt higher by this point in the sentence. More than a million bands and solo musicians now have profiles on the site. On a typical day, MySpace receives two and a half times the traffic of Google. The popularity of Anderson and DeWolfe's venture among young people is such that last summer Rupert Murdoch appropriated it, buying a controlling interest in MySpace's parent company and access to another generation for $580 million.
Open, loosely policed, and populated almost exclusively by young people presenting themselves as attractively as possible, MySpace offers abundant temptation to voyeurs and sexual predators. The site provides free and easy access to a vast and constantly replenished supply of teenage girls and boys, many of whom have posted images of themselves in various stages of undress, along with messages describing their tastes in sex as well as in music. Since anyone can pose as someone else on MySpace, it is impossible to measure the lurking. Fifteen-year-old Kimberly, the girl on a farm in Wisconsin, could really be fifty-two-year-old Buck, the parolee in a trailer in New Jersey, hiding behind a scan from a high school yearbook and a few convincing phrases of teenage jabber. At least two cases of sexual assault of underage girls have been traced to initial meetings on MySpace, according to newspaper reports.
s a social environment, MySpace is a sexual minefield. And this troubling fact is not mitigated by the fact that, as a musical resource, the site presents a set of problems of another sort. Much has been made of the Internet's effect on the music business. Everyone knows that, thanks to file-sharing and paid downloading services such as iTunes, CD sales have been declining for several years. Apple (Steve Jobs's computer company, not the Beatles' record label, the latter of which now profits nicely from its trademark license to the former) has become one of the top three suppliers of music in the country. Yet MySpace represents something other than a new delivery system or a different economic model for the music industry. It is altering the dynamics of the relationship between the two groups of young people involved in popular music: the musicians and their audience. And so, in due course, it is changing the music itself.
MySpace, in its essence, seems like the realization of a democratic, almost utopian ideal. It eliminates or marginalizes the traditional bodies of mediation between those who make popular music and those who listen to it. A band does not need radio play, nor a video in rotation on MTV, to find an audience through MySpace. It does not need a record contract. It does not have to play a single gig. It needs only a Web page with a few song samples--though good photos and bio text, along with a willingness to chat with fans online, can help considerably. The way MySpace works is that members log on and message back and forth, exchanging thoughts on topics of the moment, including music. If they want to know more about a particular band, they click to the group's page and listen to (or download) a song; and if they like what they hear, they can spread the word among MySpace members on their list of "friends." Some MySpace users have as many as six thousand friends. As Greg McIntosh, the guitarist for a Michigan-based band called the Great Lakes Myth Society, said in an interview, "It's like being at a giant music conference twenty-four hours a day every day."
Emerging as it has in the wake of Clear Channel's domination of radio stations and rock concert halls, MySpace appears to be a grassroots counterbalance to the wholesale absorption of the music industry by a handful of entertainment-industry conglomerates. At the same time, it is yet another monolith--born of the people, yes, but owned by Fox.
ySpace has begun to spawn a breed of its own rock stars, bands that have made their reputations mainly through the site: Fall Out Boy, a punk-pop quartet that was recently nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist; Hawthorne Heights, another punk-pop group; Panic! at the Disco, a kitschy techno ensemble; and Arctic Monkeys, a quartet of nineteen- and twenty-year-olds from Sheffield, England, who were already famous, largely through MySpace, before they signed with Domino Records last May. When the group released its first CD, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, this January, the album entered the British pop charts at number one, and the single "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor," was the fastest-selling record in English history. Arctic Monkeys, whose music is tuneful punkish pop, will perform in the United States for the first time this spring.
Through MySpace, some bands have built ardent followings so quickly that audiences know the words to their songs before the musicians know how to play them. Fall Out Boy headlined the Warped Tour of punk acts last summer, and I caught one of the shows in Milwaukee, during a vacation with my son, who is a senior at the University of Wisconsin. Fairly impressed by the group's second CD, From Under the Cork Tree (an album with some good juvenile thrashing), I was looking forward to seeing the band and was surprised to find it utterly inept on stage--and I mean really inept, not inept in accordance with the anarchic conventions of punk. The singers (guitarist Joseph Trohman and bassist Peter Wentz) never used the microphone, and the band stopped and started in the middle of tunes, struggling nervously to find its place. (Not caring would have been punk. Struggling nervously was incompetent.) I heard most of the words, though, because the audience chanted the lyrics.
One band wildly popular on MySpace, Hollywood Undead, never played in public before becoming a sensation online. The group formed early last summer and posted a MySpace page adorned with mysterious-looking photos of the seven members of the band, their faces hidden behind hockey masks and gimmicky shrouds, along with three songs, each a listenable amalgam of hip-hop and heavy metal. As one of Undead's singers, Jeff Phillips, told The New York Times, "We were just a bunch of loser kids who sat around our friend's house all day, and we started making music and recording it on computer.... In a matter of weeks it got huge, and it kept on getting bigger and bigger.... If you look at our page, it's like we're a huge band that's toured a hundred times." So far, Hollywood Undead has had more than two million plays on MySpace, and it still has yet to tour.
he instant fame conferred by MySpace is becoming the standard practice of our time, of a piece with "American Idol" and its variants on television, which pit amateurs against one another in competition for celebrity as spectacle, granting us viewers the dual pleasure of glorying in the ascension of one of our own and wallowing in the humiliation of those to whom we relate more closely, the losers. MySpace fills most of the space on its music pages with the work of awful bands, hundreds of thousands of them, and trolling among them provides a kind of perverse entertainment. The music is searchable by five criteria: band name, band bio, band members, influences, and "sounds like." After an hour or so of using the search mode to find something worth the effort, I got punchy and, after the words "sounds like," typed "shit." Pages for more than three hundred bands popped up, and the first five, I can attest, were well categorized.
So much of the music on MySpace is so grossly underdeveloped that listening to it is almost an act of aesthetic pedophilia. Thanks to MySpace, young bands no longer need to start out by gigging, playing one-nighters, making mistakes in near anonymity, learning what works, finding their voice through a dialogue with their audience--I mean a musical dialogue, not a chat. Good bands have no need, and no time, to get better before they get famous. Surfing MySpace, I listened to a few of more than two hundred groups that listed themselves as sounding like the Beatles, and I began to consider what the moptops themselves sounded like in their apprenticeship, when they were working out their style by labor and trial, playing six sets a night for dancers in Hamburg. Then I remembered having heard Bruce Springsteen when I was a kid and he was just starting out: he sounded like a garage-ish cross between Van Morrison and Bob Dylan, but not yet like Bruce Springsteen.
The boggling scale and speed of MySpace conspire to inhibit originality, while rewarding familiarity and accessibility. The site attracts innumerable groups that sound like other acts successful on MySpace, and it engenders mediocre music that makes a quick, positive impression. Lost in the blitz of clicking on MySpace is challenging music that might be off-putting at first but could grow on listeners, stretching their ears and provoking their minds. All the bands to rise from MySpace so far, including the talented but madly over-praised Arctic Monkeys, are good, but there is not a great one among them. One cannot help but wonder if MySpace is screening out the great ones, or failing those with the capacity for greatness.
As a measure of musical tastes, MySpace is skewed by its social character. MySpace members generally discover bands through recommendations by other members. But like all information disclosed among parties inclined to impress one another, the data is loaded, likely to reflect social expectations as much as, perhaps more than, musical passions. For instance: the son of mine with whom I saw Fall Out Boy loves not only punk rock but also the music of Ella Fitzgerald and Stephen Sondheim, yet he says that he would never admit as much on MySpace. If many of the site's members are to a significant degree mouthing what they hope will make them seem cool, they are saying only what they are hearing (or typing only what they are reading). Once again, the famously raucous individualism of the Internet results in crass conformism. The spiral effect, accelerating to tornado intensity, surely accounts for the almost instantaneous emergence on MySpace of bands such as Hollywood Undead, which are simply nothing special.
So MySpace is finally not quite as democratic as it seems, and its ostensibly democratic systems are as susceptible to corruption as any in non-cyber societies. MySpace has not eliminated mediation from the music business, it has merely supplanted the old modes with new ones. There are powerful instruments of influence in this allegedly free terrain. Webmasters have the power, once consigned to concert promoters, to lure crowds to a band. (On the day of this writing, the most listened-to artist on MySpace was the sexy electro-pop vocalist Tila Tequila, and the lead photograph on her page showed her sitting on the ground, her lips pressed to the end of the picture frame, kissing something that we cannot see but which would fall at the height of a standing man's crotch.) A whole new industry of "viral marketing" employs surreptitious e-mail techniques to spread messages about paying clients to music enthusiasts online. And acts such as Hollywood Undead, a phony band hidden behind funny masks and elaborate concealments, have mastered one of the most effective ways to prevail on MySpace: pretending to be what others would like you to be. The sexual predators have figured that out, too.
David Hajdu is TNR's music critic.
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i really wonder when Myspace is going to collapse due to the infrastructure going belly up... last friday the streams were totally down, it's almost impossible to download tracks from bands pages. personally i wish they would turn off autoplaying feature as there is nothing more annoying then being blasted everytime you hit someones page..
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This story should be referenced everytime someone opines that things that the record company model is dead, the internet will allow bands to sell direct to thier fans, blah blah blah... Right or wrong there needs to be a gatekeeper to filter the good from the bad. Myspace and all those unsigned band competitions give bands the illusion that all you have to do to reach an audience is post a couple songs or play a few shows in a competition, without doing the actual work of trying to book gigs, recording on something other than a computer running pro-tools, etc.
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Holy God, that is so true with that band. I've seen them opening at a few pop punk shows in the past and they were completely awful...all over the place, off key, not in tune with each other, just utterly talentless...and they just kept getting bigger.
Then their performances on SNL this weekend...probably the worst I've ever seen by ANY band EVER on that show. And they're somehow selling out arenas??
Through MySpace, some bands have built ardent followings so quickly that audiences know the words to their songs before the musicians know how to play them. Fall Out Boy headlined the Warped Tour of punk acts last summer, and I caught one of the shows in Milwaukee, during a vacation with my son, who is a senior at the University of Wisconsin. Fairly impressed by the group's second CD, From Under the Cork Tree (an album with some good juvenile thrashing), I was looking forward to seeing the band and was surprised to find it utterly inept on stage--and I mean really inept, not inept in accordance with the anarchic conventions of punk. The singers (guitarist Joseph Trohman and bassist Peter Wentz) never used the microphone, and the band stopped and started in the middle of tunes, struggling nervously to find its place. (Not caring would have been punk. Struggling nervously was incompetent.) I heard most of the words, though, because the audience chanted the lyrics.
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Originally posted by Alex:
Holy God, that is so true with that band. I've seen them opening at a few pop punk shows in the past and they were completely awful...all over the place, off key, not in tune with each other, just utterly talentless...and they just kept getting bigger.
I only had to read this part to know exactly who you were talking about. Yes, their SNL appearance nearly sucked as much as Puffy Diddy Daddy a few years ago (with a thoroughly suckered Jimmy Page).
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Pro-tools is a crappy bands best friend...
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FOB sucked so bad on SNL. I was willing to give them the benefit fo the doubt because I don't like that genre, but wow, they could barely play. It was all so.....forced.
The biggest band on MySpace is Hawthorne Heights. I think they have more friends than even that Forbidden porn-star wannabee.
If HH is the biggest band then, ewwww.
You'd think that since they got the influx of cash from Murdoch they would at least improve performance of the site, but it's so hit or miss.
I hate MySpace. But I'm sure if I was younger, I'd probably be all over it.
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Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
i wish they would turn off autoplaying feature as there is nothing more annoying then being blasted everytime you hit someones page..
You can do that by going into your preferences. I forget exactly where it is but there is an option to disable the autoplay. I think that it may be in the 'account' part rather than in the 'edit' part but I might be wrong. If you can't find it, let me know and I'll go look.
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Dog molester (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=17387795) ...b sure2read the user comments section
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...Lots of dead people (http://www.mydeathspace.com/deaths.aspx) on myspace.com
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Originally posted by Arlette:
FOB sucked so bad on SNL. I was willing to give them the benefit fo the doubt because I don't like that genre, but wow, they could barely play. It was all so.....forced.
That was the worst "musical" preformance I've ever seen on TV. They have not one iota of musical talent.
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Originally posted by Julian, faux celeb-porn CONNOISSEUR:
They have not one iota of musical talent. [/QB]
Neither do bands that play at "iota" ;) , since we are using that word.
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She has gotten pretty with age. I"m very surprised. Also, I liked her video.
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Miss Deaf Texas (http://www.myspace.com/texanrose)
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The last time I went to Canada customs was really concerned with whether or not I had pepper spray or mace and completely unconcerned with the fact that I had a broad-sword. "Oh no. Only offensive weapons!" he snapped like I was an idiot for telling him that I had a sword. Yet I could have been arrested for mace.
On the way back they asked me if the sausage I bought was beef or pork. I said "I don't know." And they said "Probably pork. Go ahead."
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My dog makes these really disgusting noises when he's licking his bunghole. It sounds like the sounds a trained pig makes when it has located a truffle.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PspCAKdqzW4]Myspace Junkie (http://)
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i think someone what at myspace (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=76053637) is trying to tell me something :( :p :cool:
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Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
i think someone what at myspace (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=76053637) is trying to tell me something :( :p :cool:
HAH!!
She looks a little like Nicole Richie, doesn't she??
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this is classic! (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12793765/?GT1=8199)
When social networking goes stupid
Bragging on MySpace.com leads to arson charges for two teenagers.
Updated: 4:24 a.m. ET May 15, 2006
ROCKVILLE, Md. - Two teenagers were charged with setting fires in suburban Washington after they bragged about the blazes on MySpace.com, authorities said.
The 17-year-old schoolmates were involved in 17 fires in Montgomery County, fire officials said Friday. The teens face 22 charges, including two counts each of first-degree arson and four counts of second-degree arson.
Their names were not released because they were charged as juveniles.
Stores, vehicles, a bowling alley and two school buses were set on fire between Jan. 20 and April 16. Investigators got a tip to check out the online social networking site MySpace.com, where they found photos and descriptions.
"The significant thing is they posted on the Internet, and bragged about the fires, and that certainly allowed us to break the case," county Fire Chief Thomas W. Carr Jr. said. "They posted photos of these fires."
The teens are being held at a juvenile detention center.
"Whatever their motive is, they took the opportunity to set numerous fires," Carr said. "The neighbors were very much concerned about the terror in their neighborhood. They were freaked out."
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"Videotaping this crime spree is the best idea we ever had!"
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